1. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to furniture and room partition construction. More particularly, the present invention pertains to components which can be readily assembled to form a wide variety of furniture units or room partition units with the units easily disassembled when desired due to the particular connecting joints used to assemble the various components together.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The majority of furniture units available are preassembled in a fixed configuration. This, to a degree, limits their adaptability to different locations. Often, a person has a particular location in which he desires to have a particular type of furniture unit, only to find that there are no furniture units of the desired type available which would fit the location or that only a very limited number of satisfactory furniture units are available with little selection of style. It also frequently occurs that a furniture unit is obtained for a particular location in a person's house, but that subsequently the person moves to a different home having no location suitable for the particular furniture unit. Consequently, in such situations, it is necessary for the person to dispose of the furniture unit and obtain a new one suitable for the new location. This difficulty can occur even when the person has not moved to a new home, for example, should the person choose to rearrange the furniture in his home.
Many furniture units having the same function have different designs to provide a variety of sizes and styles. If the furniture units are provided as finished items, this variety necessitates a laborious and costly manufacturing process. Furniture components have been provided from which a plurality of furniture items can be assembled and disassembled as desired. However, often these furniture components have little strength and so the resulting furniture items have been unable to support more than a nominal load.
Likewise, room partitions are frequently desired to divide or rearrange the layout of a room. Often it is desired to have such partitions relatively readily movable so that the room partitioning or layout can be arranged rapidly and with only small effort. Typical of some of the prior art structures are those set forth in the following list of U.S. patents.
The first patent is U.S. Pat. No. 3,278,209 which shows a connector joint for fastening together tubular frame members. The connector member is screwed into a receptacle in a tubular frame member.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,604,342 discloses a connector member for tubular elements wherein the connector members are plugged together and held in place by screw-type fastening means.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,089,716 discloses a connector member for tubular elements wherein the connector member will plug into tubular members and be held in position by screw-type fastening means.
Finally, U.S. Pat. No. 3,835,354 discloses a connector joint for furniture members wherein the connector members are plugged into tubular elements and held together by screw-type fastening means.
The present invention is an arrangement of components adapted for ready assembly in a variety of combinations to provide a variety of furniture units and a variety of room partition units. The units can be readily disassembled and reassembled to permit alteration of the designs and to permit easy moving of the units from one location to another. Since the wide variety of units are assembled from a relatively limited number of fixed components, the components can be produced in large quantities, thus reducing the manufacturing cost.